Then they assigned each of those 12 constellations equal amounts of time. "To make a tidy match with their 12-month calendar, the Babylonians ignored the fact that the Sun actually moves through 13 constellations, not 12. The line from Earth through the Sun points to Virgo for 45 days, but it points to Scorpius for only 7 days," NASA said in its original blog post. "The constellations are different sizes and shapes, so the Sun spends different lengths of time lined up with each one. However, according to the Babylonians' ancient stories, there were actually 13 constellations, but they had to choose one to leave out - Ophiuchus - so that they fit nicely in the 12-month calendar.īut, 3,000 years later, the sky has shifted because Earth's axis does not point in exactly the same direction anymore - meaning the constellations are no longer in the same place anyway. NASA explained in a Tumblr post that the Babylonians divided the zodiac into 12 equal parts, assigning a constellation to each that the sun travels through each year.
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